We’re talking about a film that begins with a madman ex-Army sniper randomly killing five people near PNC Park, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ home field. But that’s not all, as Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle points out:

Mick, whose full review will appear in tomorrow’s Weekender, calls one image in the opening “the most unfortunate single shot in a movie this year.” He describes the sniper looking for victims through his rifle scope: ” We see the potential victims through the crosshairs — the movie invites us to identify, not with innocent people, but with the assassin’s power. And then, for an endless second and a half, through the crosshairs, we see a little girl.”

Yikes.

Other critics are saying the same thing:

“The idea of watching a movie in which a sniper methodically crafts his own bullets, practices weekly at a gun range, then waits quietly in an empty parking garage before shooting five people dead may not sound like the most appealing form of entertainment during these tragic days,” wrote the Associated Press’ Christy Lemire, who liked the movie.

“Because it begins with this scene of a mass slaughter, shown from the gunman’s point of view, the movie accidentally and automatically evokes obscene images of slain first-grade children. Those images will be in most Americans’ minds for a while, certainly through the early run of the movie,” wrote Richard Corliss of Time magazine.

Yes, rescheduling a movie this close to its release date may be as easy as stopping a glacier, but it might be wise. After a week of seeing the faces of those 20 dead children, whose funerals were being held this week, how many folks really want to see a movie that starts with a mass killing this weekend? The box-office damage from staying the course might be greater than the damage of rescheduling. Even the film’s more-than-respectable 78 Tomatometer rating probably won’t help much.

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Originally Posted by Cassel's Reckoning:

Matt once made a very nice play in Seattle where he spun away from a pass rusher and hit Bowe off his back foot for a first down.